The Solitaries
by garamonder
Summary: Peeta enlists a reluctant Haymitch to solve the murder of a Peacekeeper, which quickly threatens to turn into disaster for the recovering District 12. Post-MJ.


Public crowds were a rarity before the war, except for when they'd been mandatory assemblies. Everybody had gone about with heads buried in their private miseries, avoiding anything that might draw them together. Even now they drew close with the hesitancy of people who feared being taken out with one shot.

Haymitch was feeling nosy. Sometimes the liquor did that. The stash he was bringing home from the market was already depleting itself. He stumbled over and pushed his way through the milling throng with cheerful combativeness.

"What is it?"

Greasy Sae spared him a look from the ground, where she was crouched over a still form. A body. Haymitch did not recognize the man whose head was bashed in bloodily.

"One of the kids found him."

Away from the group, Haymitch saw a wide-eyed little girl crying hysterically into an adult's arms. The cynical part of his nature wondered how she still found death such a shock. "Who was it?" someone asked.

"One of the refugees," Sae murmured, closing the man's eyes.

Poor slob, thought Haymitch. The man had run away from devastation and straight into the wrong end of a heavy branch. As always whenever a problem emerged he assessed how much he ought to reasonably care, and resignedly remained where he was standing.

Over some heads he saw Peeta wandering over with curiosity. He managed to part the crowd with less difficulty than Haymitch, ignoring the looks of consternation some of the townspeople still gave him. Haymitch felt irritated with them. "What happened? Oh." His eyes widened at the sight.

Someone came over with a sheet and draped it over the body, sparing any more villagers the grisly sight. A few men came and lifted the body onto a board and bore him through the crowd. The little girl watched them go with a fresh wave of tears.

Sae stood and wiped her hands on her apron. "We should notify any family he had."

"I don't think he had any." The words were Delly's, she looking sorrowful. She stood on the fringes, where she'd been peeking at the scene through her fingers. "He came alone."

She would know. Upon returning to District 12 the Cartwright girl had launched right into the mess of sorting out refugees arriving and departing. Even Haymitch had to admit, the girl's bright smile was the finest greeting a person could expect.

Delly squirmed a little under further questions from the crowd, who the man was, and where he'd come from, was there anybody they ought to contact. Her plump face, normally so pleasant, was strained with the distress of holding something back. Eventually she burst out, "I think he was a Peacekeeper."

That silenced the questions.

Delly wrung her hands. "So—maybe there's someone he left in District 2. He was so vague."

Haymitch groped for a flask and found one at the ready, draining most of what was sloshing in it.

"We'll bury him tonight," said Sae. Her granddaughter, heedless of efforts to keep her away from the scene, shuffled forward and Sae put her arm around the girl. Then the woman went over to the girl who'd found the body and Haymitch could hear her offering the poor little child a hot cup of cocoa, a new wonder arrived from the Capitol.

The crowd began to disperse, and Peeta looked around incomprehensibly. "Isn't somebody going to do something?" he asked. "A man just _died_."

"What do you expect anyone to do?" asked Jonner, one of the men who still worked the mines. He was coated in black grime. "He was a Peacekeeper." While Jonner didn't say it, the words _he deserved it_ trailed the end of the sentence and hung in the air like an ugly fume. Haymitch had once heard Sae wonder aloud whether the layer of dust that coated the Seam was from black coal or black humors.

"That doesn't mean we should ignore justice," said Greasy Sae, coming back to them.

"Well it means he'll have to wait his turn for it," Jonner said gruffly, beginning to turn away.

"So it's okay that somebody can act as judge and jury and executioner, alone." Peeta frowned, and Haymitch wanted to tell him that this was a battle lost before the firing began. Especially considering Katniss had taken justice into her own hands in a very public, and unpredictable, manner not a year before.

A woman holding an infant spoke up, having approached the scene only after the body had been taken away. "You're defending a Peacekeeper? You don't know what he's done."

"_Nobody_ does," Peeta argued. "He might have done nothing. Besides, we didn't know he was a Peacekeeper. Who's to say that whoever killed him did know? Then it's just the murder of a civilian. Like any one of us."

This had a better effect on their attitudes. Haymitch took an admiring swig from his flask.

Then Peeta said: "We ought to have some kind of official police."

Just that quickly, Peeta had doused the flame. Shocked faces met him from all around. The swig Haymitch took this time was rueful. He took all kinds of swigs. Celebratory, ironic, thoughtful.

"You are not serious." This, Greslin, another miner, said flatly. Disbelief was echoed in every other face. "We got rid of the Peacekeepers and you want to bring them back."

"I want rules. Don't you think there should be a rule that you can't murder people?" Peeta said in a mild tone that Haymitch knew all too well.

Greslin blinked at him. "Well—sure," he said slowly. What else could he say? "No murdering anybody. Rule number one."

"So who is going to make sure that stays a rule and not just a suggestion?"

"I-" Greslin frowned and shoved his hands in the pockets of his greasy coveralls. "We are _not_ bringing in Peacekeepers."

"I didn't say that." Peeta spread his hands placatingly. Haymitch had approached an angry goose in much the same way. "But it's been close to a year since any Peacekeepers have been here. Everybody can do things freely now they had to get away with before."

Ah, thought Haymitch.

"There used to be rules about going through the fence. Now anybody can do it. There used to be rules about what you could say. Now anybody says anything they want. There used to be rules about murder."

Several people shuffled uncomfortably.

"They killed a man and left his body where anyone could find it. Because they knew they could."

Haymitch smiled.

Now it wasn't only that somebody had gotten killed. Now it was that someone had done this deliberately with the knowledge that the district was powerless to punish them. In less than two minutes Peeta had turned it from a personal, violent attack to a purposeful snub at the hollow joke of the local authority.

Haymitch watched the transfiguration of expressions with amusement. For a community that had been pummeled into submission to a distant authority for so long, they had an inordinate amount of pride. Judging by the vague annoyance in Peeta's face Haymitch figured the boy had hoped that their sense of decency would have suffered greater bruising than their dignity. Haymitch knew better. When you'd been oppressed for so long, it was your distorted sense of pride that kept you alive, not some fluffy communal righteousness.

"By now you know that you and the Cartwright girl are the only nice people around. You're an endangered species," he commented to Peeta as they walked to their homes in the Victor's Village, after Peeta had exacted promises from the group to discuss the matter further. "We ought to set up statues of you two in the square to guilt everybody as they walk by." It came out less rudely than he'd intended.

"What?" said Peeta distractedly. Haymitch glanced over to see if the boy was paying attention, and found his eyes were unfocused. "I don't know," said Peeta in answer to nothing. "It's not." He veered away a little. So did Haymitch.

Anymore these episodes of confusion did not often last long but this time it was several minutes before Peeta seemed to understand where he was. Haymitch stuck around long enough to make sure the boy didn't wander into a ditch and break his neck and when it looked like Peeta was more or less Peeta again, Haymitch went quickly to his geese and liquor, unable to face the boy's subsequent shame.

Those demented moments spooked him, which was nothing next to the way they affected Katniss. Even now, it was a surreal thing to witness and felt uncomfortably like spying on something private. Somebody had carved a piece of that boy out and put something alien in its place.

"You're raising a little army," a voice said the next day, and Haymitch didn't have to look over his shoulder to picture Katniss's disgust with geese that were every bit as ornery as Haymitch.

At this point, spurred on by the incident the day before and the usual things that set him to drinking, Haymitch was tipsy. "They are my children," he said, spreading his arms.

Katniss walked to his counter and unceremoniously shoved off a pile of debris before sitting on it. Haymitch thought about protesting for the hypocritical fun of it but instead regarded her with cloudy eyes, not able to format a properly scathing comment. "Why the visit?"

"Peeta is talking to some people from the village."

For such a loner she was terrible at being alone. "Why didn't you go?"

Katniss shrugged. "It doesn't have anything to do with me."

"Not much does, anymore. Isn't that nice?"

She said nothing but stared down a goose that had wandered inside.

"Drink?" Haymitch waggled a bottle at her.

Katniss gave him a flat look so with a "well I offered" shrug he downed the rest of it. "Thass good," he slurred shortly afterwards. "You shouldn' drown your worries, it will float your liver."

"Thank you."

"I never stop mentoring."

"You really never do."

"So why didn't you go, again?" He cocked an eyebrow at her. "Thought you'da gone to back him up."

Silence.

"'Less'n you disagree with him."

"We don't need Peacekeepers," Katniss said with sudden heat.

"Do we need to keep peace?"

She gave him an incredulous look. "You cannot agree with him."

"Sweetheart, I live to be contrary. I don't agree or disagree or give a rat's ass in general." He closed his bleary eyes. "Is that why you're here? See which side I'm on?"

The girl leaned her head back against a cabinet. "No." She did not sound sure.

"Well, you'll get no help from my quarter." A snort from her indicated the extent to which she'd expected it.

Katniss jerked as Haymitch abruptly sat his bottle down with a heavy thud. "Let's go," he said.

"Where?"

"To hear what Loverboy's got to say." He didn't always like what Peeta said, but he often liked the way he said it. Plus, he felt he owed the boy at least the pathetic show of support Haymitch could offer.

"I thought you didn't care," said Katniss, but she slid off the counter.

Haymitch packed some liquor for the excursion. "Not what he thinks, no. But half the town still eyeballs 'im like they're expecting him to go for their jugulars."

This ellicited the flash of guilt he'd expected and the girl wordlessly followed him into the waning light outside. First, he tossed a kiss to the geese and Katniss tossed them a scowl.

In the short going-on-twelve months since the refugees had begun filtering back into the district, the debris and desolation had cleared up remarkably. Haymitch had seen the ruins that the Capitol had made of District 12, and at the time could not imagine the then-mythical bare ground that seemed to lay fathoms beneath the bricks and bones. The bricks and bones were gone, almost as if by magic.

Touches of other districts assimilating into the area were visible in different patterns of cloths fluttering from clothing lines, shops that were already blooming down by the square, and even in the styles of new housing that were being erected. Part of this, he suspected, was due to Delly's indefatigable enthusiasm for encouraging refugees from other districts to introduce their own cultures.

When Panem was finally rebuilt, it would be by the earnest spirits of the Delly Cartwrights of the country. Certainly not by Abernathys or Everdeens.

The new town hall was a simple structure and the few who gave the rat's asses Haymitch couldn't spare argued daily about making it into something grander. Maybe they'd even add a second story. For the time being it was a big box of wood, although sturdy.

Squabbling voices reached them before they even pushed inside. Peeta might command a captive Capitol audience with ease, but nobody here was in a mood to be charmed and at this point the boy just seemed to be salvaging the situation.

In his most endearing, 'I'm with you guys' hands-up pose, Peeta was patiently contending with Jonner and some other outspoken townspeople for a final word. "We're the last district to have any kind of police. All the others have a system. We need to catch up."

Haymitch could have told him the competitive tactic wouldn't work. Despite the influx of refugees, District 12 had become something isolated and remote as ever. They didn't care about keeping up with the other districts, especially now that the Games no longer determined who got what.

"So?" said a sharp-faced woman. "If they want their awful shepherds let them have them."

"It's not about wanting babysitters. It's about moving on." Roa Garlander, at least, was on board with this, and the man went on: "We can't expect to live in a society without consequence."

This was met with thoughtful silence. Roa was on the new regional agricultural board, and he lived with his wife and children—remaining children, little Rue lost to the Games—in the Victor's Village. People afforded an unexplainable respect to those whose children had died in the Hunger Games. Everyone nursed their own private losses, but there was a different kind of gravity to such a public one, almost an apology for having witnessed the child's death in the name of some wretched idea of entertainment.

Peeta looked around, searching for another friendly face in the sea of distrust, and found Haymitch and Katniss sneaking through the door. He began to smile but something in their countenance was not encouraging to him, and the smile faded as he realized they were not fully behind him on this. Haymitch felt resentful that the boy always expected everyone to follow him up the high road. Or worse, to beat him to it.

Hazelle Hawthorne's voice rang clearly. "I don't feel safe knowing that someone's confident enough in our inaction to murder a man in the open, regardless of what he could have done."

Peeta beamed at her. Hazelle had had almost no interactions with Peeta, had been the mother of a boy who she would have known was hopelessly in love with Katniss, and who had fallen out with her. She gave him a small smile.

Katniss prowled the edges. Whatever disapproval she harbored of Peeta's notion was checked by her protectiveness of him, and she gave frosty looks to anybody who seemed to be taking his proposition a little too personally.

"We have to start thinking about the future," said Roa gently. "When we plant, we understand we may not see a full harvest. But we know we have to plant, and again and again."

"So who?" Jonner crossed his arms. "Who's going to be in charge of that? We could _ship in_ help from oh, say, District 2. That's what they do, right? They could help keep the peace. We could call them Peacekeepers."

A grumble of dissent followed this sarcasm. Peeta frowned at him. "Anderton."

"What?"

"Anderton. Not District 2. That's what they're calling themselves now."

This took Jonner aback. And everyone else. Haymitch hadn't known about that. District 2, the last to rebel against the Capitol, was the first to move on and assert an identity of its own. Nobody in District 12 had even discussed the matter.

And it was such a... _normal_ name, nothing Career about it at all. It seemed unfair, somehow.

In the quiet that followed, Peeta opened his mouth to say something and then he closed it. Haymitch expected the boy to capitalize on the edge he'd gained, but the moment was wrong, the mood too resistant. Peeta rubbed the bridge of his nose. Surely he hadn't expected to win them over in one go.

Sobriety was like a lead weight so Haymitch lifted his flask. This time the swig was a mournful one.

Peeta seemed to be marshaling his words, finding the ones that would let him control the moment.

"Rousing stuff," commented Haymitch loudly. Katniss glared _daggers_ at him.

Flippant swig. "We ought to rename District 12 now. Maybe after our two favorite and only other Victors. Peetaville. Katniss City. Keetatown."

Delly clamped her hands over a giggle. Greasy Sae snorted and shook her head, and the tension miraculously eased.

"Haymitch isn't doing much of anything," said one of the miners by way of a joke. "Why doesn't he solve this? The rest of us are too busy putting this place back together to run around trying to figure out who bashed a Peacekeeper's head in."

It was a joke. Sure. People even laughed. But Peeta and Hazelle were looking entirely too thoughtful. Haymitch felt strongly he needed to emphasize that that had been a joke. A _joke_. An unrealistic sentiment expressed to diffuse a tense moment. Voila: joke.

"I have geese," he said. "That's much of something. What would you all do without my geese?"

"Breathe easy," muttered Katniss.

Sae looked at him and said with a little smirk, "Haymitch _was_ a vital agent in the rebellion. He's the only one here who's been an officer. Maybe he's the man for the job."

Haymitch was flummoxed by the change in demeanor. Now the expressions of doubt were slowly turning into something more considering. "No!" he said.

"Wouldn't you represent the highest ability this District has to offer?" said a man Haymitch had never seen before; a refugee, surely. "A Victor of the Quarter Quell, and a high-ranking rebel. You've got the knowledge and experience."

"Who are you?" Haymitch demanded. "Where'd you come from? Don't you assume things."

"Like that you'd be capable?" said the man, amused.

"Yeah!" Haymitch waved the flask to remind them just who was the town drunk around here.

Katniss piped, "I think it's a great idea," like the brat she was. Her tiny smile was sardonic, but it was in earnestness that Hazelle and others began murmuring their support. He looked at their faces and couldn't believe what he saw there. Did they actually think he'd be inspired by their faith in him?

"You're just trying to avoid talking about Peacekeepers!" he hollered. "You're all putting it off."

It was true enough, but he could see Peeta wasn't pressing the point. Yet. Haymitch realized this was a victory for the bread boy, pitiful as it was. He swore and was irritated that it only made Jonner laugh.

Haymitch swore all the way back to his house, with Peeta and Katniss trailing behind him. He sourly pretended not to see the light, parting kiss Katniss gave Peeta's cheek before slipping away through the dark. Where was all her dispproval now? On hold, just like Jonner's, relieved at this patchwork remedy for the time being. She didn't want Peacekeepers either, what did Loverboy think of that?

Haymitch had gone in there on no one's side, yet this had all gotten upended on the only neutral party.

Peeta followed Haymitch into his house, the older man mentally willing his little minions to sic Peeta. But they didn't, they never did.

"Can't you make your way home, or do I have to find that for you too?" asked Haymitch. His foul mood had no effect.

Peeta's expression was deceptively mild. "Are you really so mad?"

"At getting reaped into this?"

"That's not fair," said Peeta.

"It really ain't. I sure didn't volunteer."

The point was: Haymitch did not want to do this. He'd made a point of doing as few things that he didn't want to do that he could since his own Hunger Games. He couldn't understand why the town wanted him to do this. Why did people turn to Victors, even now? What about surviving a massacre made anyone fit to lead? He had done his fucking duty as a mentor, that was his Victor's penance. He'd even fought the Capitol. No one deserved to expect anything more of him.

They sat at the cluttered table. The litter of Haymitch's penance lay around them.

"You owe me, Haymitch," Peeta said sternly.

He never played this card. Haymitch regarded him, flask in hand. "_This_ is what you're calling in a favor over? The murder of a Peacekeeper?"

"A refugee," Peeta pointed out. "You don't know what he ran from."

"Is it exhausting to be so obsessively good?" Haymitch spat at him.

Peeta frowned back, irritated. "No. I walk along and trip on the sudden need to be idiotically noble. It's not as though I have to put aside my hangups same as you. It's just some nervous_ tic_."

Feeling defensive, Haymitch leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. The bottle in his hand made this difficult. "Rebellion over," he insisted. "My work is done."

"Now who's naïve?"

"I didn't say you were naïve, just a bloody altruist." Haymitch studied the stains on his ceiling. "Why are you so dead set on me doing this?"

"Because for once, just _once_," said Peeta furiously, leaning forward, "you're going to do something for me, for _my_ sake, not Katniss's or the rebellion's or whatever."

Haymitch had wondered whether the boy was ever bitter about that. Every sacrifice ever made for the Mellark kid had been on behalf of Katniss or the war, not on the merit of his own worth. People liked Peeta, but they'd never needed him. Not like they needed Katniss.

The jackass had him. For a moment Haymitch hated the kid.

Haymitch scowled at his kitchen table. Then he muttered, "Fine. But!" He held up a finger before Peeta could smile. "Don't you think I'm running around on my own, playing detective like some lunatic."

"I'll help you," said Peeta.

"Then why am I doing this at all?"

"Because I'm not running around on my own, playing detective like some lunatic." When this failed to draw a snort from Haymitch, he rolled his eyes and added, "You lack the conviction, but you've got authority."

"There's no authority 'round here, wasn't that the point of this night?"

"Clout, whatever." Now that he was certain of Haymitch's assistance, Peeta looked more relaxed. "They doubt me."

It was said without spite. Haymitch wondered, detachedly, if he'd come to despise Peeta one day. He saw the breach in his mind, like bright threads reaching far into the future and suddenly snapping. Rebuild homes and businesses and population all you wanted, you couldn't reconstruct a person the same way, and Peeta refused to understand that Haymitch might want to stay dilapidated.

But if the time ever came, this wasn't it. He'd help Peeta with this damn thing, and he'd tolerate the kid and go on tolerating him for as long as the threads would yield.

"I'll start in the morning. Alright? Go away."

...

...

I haven't written fic in a while but I had scraps of this story floating around my computer and figured I'd update in the spirit of the new movie. This is Haymitch and Peeta centric, with some Katniss for good measure.


End file.
